Gold is available from earth's crust, in the seas, river and plants. In nature gold if found in veins and secondary alluvial deposits as a free metal or in combined state.

Gold is also recovered as byproduct from Silver & Copper refining. Placer mining or panning and open pit mining is techniques commonly used to recover gold from earth. South Africa is world's single largest gold producer, followed by USA, Australia, Russia and Canada and West Africa.

Pure gold is used in those parts of the world where jewellery is purchased as much for in- vestment as it is for adornment, but it tends to be vulnerable to scratching. Elsewhere, it is usually mixed, or alloyed, with other metals.
Not only do they harden it, but influence the colour; white shades are achieved by alloying gold with silver, nickel or palladium; red alloys contain mainly copper. A harder alloy is made by adding nickel or a tiny percentage of titanium.